Nearly every household provided with electrical service has, at a service entryway, a watt-hour meter for monitoring the consumption of electrical energy in the household. A principal requirement there is positive electrical contact between the meter and its socket, which may be located in a service panel or the like. Now plug-and-jack adapters with transient voltage surge suppression (TVSS) means are being interposed between the meter and its socket for protection of downstream electrical equipment as well as meters themselves. Such meter adapters, into which the watt-hour meter now plugs, plug into the conventional meter socket in like manner.
Straight blade-like or spade terminals protruding from the base of the meter housing slidably engage receptive socket jaws within such a panel--or now within such a meter adapter. Jaw improvements exemplified in a unitary terminal having the blade-like plug portion at its one end and the complementary jaws of the jack portion at its opposite end were suggested in Allina U.S. Pat. No. 4,944,692. Use of the same or similar constructions in non-unitary connector terminals is likewise beneficial and suggests other improvements. The present invention is directed particularly to assembled electrical plug-and-jack connectors, with interchangeable plug and jack terminals.